


All the Wasted Chances

by werepope (quiteparadise)



Series: The Start of Something [6]
Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Fluff, M/M, Sickness, Thranduil is a horrible patient
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-18
Updated: 2015-12-18
Packaged: 2018-05-07 11:22:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5454779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quiteparadise/pseuds/werepope
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bard makes a poor nurse.  Thranduil is just poorly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All the Wasted Chances

**Author's Note:**

> _What flickers_  
>  _with some delicacy_  
>   
>  _of feeling,_  
>   
>  _some hesitancy–_  
>  _and then persists._  
>   
>   
>  Rae Armantrout, "Luster"

Thranduil finds Bard in the laundry room transferring a load of dark clothes into the dryer. He has his hair pulled up in one of Thranduil's elastic bands, pilfered from the dish on the bathroom sink where they gather and multiply. The t-shirt is his own, maroon faded to nearly pink, the hem fallen on one side. There is a hole in the armpit that becomes visible when he lifts his arms to flip out the length of a skirt, check the care instructions on the tag.

Thranduil drapes himself against Bard's back, lays his weary head on Bard's shoulder. "You let me sleep in."

Bard opens a cabinet to get a dryer sheet and Thranduil tightens his arms around him to enjoy the shift and pull of muscle under so little cover. "You had a long week," he says, neverminding the leisurely grope.

"You let me sleep in," Thranduil repeats, slow and emphatic, a love song the way some species of whale sing them.

"You okay? You sound kinda rough."

Everyone's a critic and Thranduil has been nursing a headache since Wednesday, because of a low pressure system and too much hand work. He sighs. One of these days he'll hire an assistant to do all the tedious appliqué, but until then he'll have to keep stitching charmeuse ruffles himself, with all of the side effects that come with the job.

"Not quite awake yet," he says, letting Bard elbow him back a bit, giving him just enough room to turn around in without actually relinquishing his hold. Bard touches his neck and he rolls his head back under attentive fingers until he realizes what kind of attention they're giving, applying a seeking pressure under his jaw.

"Stop that."

Bard frowns at him. "Hold still."

"I am not sick."

"I'm just feeling."

"Your aim's off."

"No it isn't." Bard presses the back of his hand to Thranduil's forehead, half obscuring his vision. Not enough to miss the way his frown deepens, though.

"I am not sick," he insists, but the damage has been done. Bard is already side-stepping away, all but making a warding sign against him. Thranduil scowls. "I am _not_ sick."

"Go lay back down. I'll bring you tea," Bard says, abandoning him to the wild of the laundry room, his whole front side gone cold now without Bard's warmth to plaster himself up against.

"For your information, sir, I do not get sick!" Thranduil calls after him, maybe a bit more scratchily than usual. He clears his throat.

A cup of tea won't hurt, anyway.

…

Bard banishes him to the bedroom so sternly that Thranduil feels as if he's been grounded. He isn't allowed cook lunch or dinner, can't even lounge forlornly on the sofa and be waited upon because Bard doesn't want him getting any of the kids sick, as if he hadn't contracted it from one of them in the first place.

Instead he is encouraged to take a shower, nap, and drink glasses of orange juice and water as they're set on the bedside table. So maybe he sulks a bit, browsing the internet on his tablet until his eyes get irritated by the light.

"Bard."

He can hear them out in the living room, the murmur of their voices over the television.

"Bard!"

He gropes blindly for his telephone, gets irritated when he has to unwrap himself from his warm cocoon to find the thing amongst the covers only to realize it's on the table charging.

He calls.

Sensibly, Bard comes to him instead of answering, mouth quirked up in amused disbelief. "Really?"

"I need my glasses."

Bard disappears, probably to retrieve them from the studio but possibly just to get back to _Dancing with the Stars_ or whatever they're watching while he wallows in solitary misery. It's not as if he's the one who got them all watching it in the first place. It's not as if his commentary is the best part of the whole show.

Bard reappears with Thranduil's reading glasses and a fresh cup of tea. The scent of lavender, mint, and lemon precedes him.

"Thank you," he says, pushing himself up enough to drink.

"You're welcome." Bard touches the sleep-messed length of his braid, feels his forehead, sweeps Kleenex into the wastepaper basket. He goes into the bathroom to brush his teeth, comes back smelling like mouthwash and the sage hand soap on the sink. He strips out of his jeans to pull sleep pants on.

Thranduil settles deeper into the mattress as he watches, already languid with the promise of much-deserved cuddling.

Bard gets the extra blanket from the bench at the end of the bed, snags a pillow from his side, says: "If you need to go to the hospital, wake me. If not, don't."

Thranduil sits up so fast he nearly scalds himself. "What are you doing?"

"Going to sleep."

" _No._ "

Bard is already shaking his head. "Thranduil–"

"No."

"You're sick."

"You can't."

"I can."

"Bard."

"Goodnight."

"But I can't sleep without you," Thranduil says.

Bard smiles. "Try." He closes the door on the way out.

…

To be fair, he does try. He even manages to doze a couple times, but every time he checks the clock it seems to have only progressed a few minutes.

He was used to sleeping alone before Bard, after Elien. He even got rather good at it. But then Bard moved in, with his radiating warmth and his heavy hands, his fondness for occupying the middle of the mattress with Thranduil, not instead of him. And now Thranduil is just supposed to give that up because of a cold? No, he's made of sterner stuff.

He doesn't look it, though, especially when he's standing barefoot on the living room rug, wrapped in the duvet and clutching a tissue. He looks like he's made of fluff and that it's all about to come apart at the seams. But that's only to be expected, really, as that's exactly how he feels.

He squishes himself into the few inches of empty space between Bard and the edge of the couch, squirming to keep himself covered and make more room for himself. Mostly asleep, Bard is accommodating, rolling onto his side and offering his arm as a neck pillow.

It's not the best fit but it's ten times as good as laying stranded in their empty bed, nothing to anchor him. He shuffles closer still and Bard moves automatically, shifting into the motion. When he runs into the back of the couch, he stops. Thranduil can actually hear him come awake, the change of his breathing, the little huff of realization.

"I'm not going back to bed." Thranduil snakes an arm out of his blanket to wind stubbornly around Bard's chest. "You can't make me."

"We can't both be sick," Bard says, his voice a rough rumble.

"So don't get sick."

"I'm trying, but my husband is determined to make me company to his misery."

Thranduil's responding groan turns into a whine when Bard begins to move with purpose, extricating himself from his wedge between Thranduil and the cushions. "No. Stop running from me," he says, grabbing a fistful of Bard's shirt.

"I'm not running. I'm escorting you."

Thranduil goes suddenly and stubbornly limp. Why not? It works for toddlers and he clearly has no pride to be injured anymore. "Torturing me. Cruelly and unusually."

Bard tugs very gently on Thranduil's braid. "I can't sleep in the bed. You infected it," he says, and tugs again to prevent rising protest. "And if I get sick, there's no one to take our children to school in the morning. Or pick them up in the afternoon. Or cook dinner. Or–"

Thranduil sighs the sigh of the reluctantly reasonable adult, who must do what is expected of them even though it isn't pleasant at all. It goes on for rather a while.

"Fine," he concedes, after yet another pull on his braid. "But know this, Mr. Doriath-Bowman: if you do get sick, I'm not going to pull any of this hands-off crap. It'll be coddling and smothering around the clock."

Bard nods grimly. "Let's hope it doesn't come to that."

…

Thranduil wallows and sweats and sneezes for three long days. He spends the two after that coughing, somehow even more tired than he was before, but so fed up with being abed that he hauls himself weakly around the house just to spite his stupid, exhausted body. By day seven he's feeling so improved it's like a revelation.

Bard still refuses to come back to bed.

"Just because you don't have symptoms doesn't mean you're not contagious," he says logically as he skirts around Thranduil in the bathroom, naked except for a towel, hair pulled long and straight with the weight of the water. Thranduil watches covetously as a drop slides down the furrow of his spine.

"'It hath yet felt no age nor known no sorrow.'"

"What?"

Thranduil leaves the room. What other choice does he have?

...

Finally and after ten long days, Thranduil's quarantine is lifted. He washes all the bedding, even takes the duvet to the laundromat just in case. No excuses. When he says as much, Bard just laughs.

"I haven't enjoyed this either, you know," he says, putting his hands on Thranduil's hips and swaying into him. He smells like toothpaste, like the green, mossy scent of his face wash.

Thranduil mimes a swoon that's only about sixty percent fake, dragging Bard down onto the mattress with him in his sprawl. Their curves and planes align with ease of long, delightful practice.

"I'm not sure," Thranduil says, pulling the elastic from Bard's hair to watch all the soft curls spill down around his face. "I think you liked telling me no."

Bard shifts his weight from wrist to elbow, lowers himself enough to kiss Thranduil slow and searching, like he's reminding himself of all the familiarities.

"A little."

Thranduil uses newly-recovered strength to throw Bard off, toward the center of the mattress, but he wastes no time in following. He straddles Bard's hips, squeezes with his thighs until Bard is gasping and wincing through his laughter.

"You're going to pay for that, sir," he threatens, and spreads his hands against Bard's chest to match the grip on his own hips.

Bard digs his fingers in more purposefully and says: "Come on then."


End file.
